The following are sign languages reported to be spoken by at least 10,000 people. Estimates for sign language use are so crude, and definitions of what counts as proficiency so varied, that 100,000 speakers is not necessarily more than 10,000. For most sign languages we do not have even a crude estimate. For instance, there are reported to be a million signers in Ethiopia, but it is unknown which or how many sign languages they use.
Language
Family or origin
Legal recognition and where spoken natively by significant population
There are perhaps around two hundred sign languages in use around the world today. The number is not known with any confidence; new sign languages emerge frequently through creolization and //de novo// (and occasionally through language planning). In some countries, such as Sri Lanka and Tanzania, each school for the deaf may have a separate language, known only to its students and sometimes denied by the school; on the other hand, countries may share sign languages, though sometimes under different names (Croatian and Serbian, Indian and Pakistani). Deaf sign languages also arise outside of educational institutions, especially in village communities with high levels of congenital deafness, but there are significant sign languages developed for the hearing as well, such as the speech-taboo languages used in aboriginal Australia. The following list is grouped into three sections:
Deaf sign languages, which are the preferred languages of Deaf communities around the world;
Signed modes of spoken languages, also known as manually coded languages, which are a bridge between the deaf and oral languages;
Auxiliary sign systems, which are not native languages, but are signed systems of varying complexity used in addition to oral languages. Simple gestures are not included, as they do not constitute language.
The list is sorted alphabetically and regionally, and such groupings should not be taken to imply any genetic relationships between the languages (see List of language families).[1]
Deaf sign languages Languages are assigned families as British, Swedish (perhaps a branch of BSL), French (with branches ASL (American), Austro-Hungarian, Danish, Italian), German, Japanese, and language isolates. Contemporary Africa There are at least 25 sign languages in Africa, according to researcher Nobutaka Kamei.[2][3][4] Some have distributions that are completely independent of those of African spoken languages. At least 13 foreign sign languages, mainly from Europe and America, have been introduced to at least 27 African nations; some of the 23 sign languages documented by Kamei have originated with or been influenced by them.
Sign Language Etymologies
The following are sign languages reported to be spoken by at least 10,000 people.
Estimates for sign language use are so crude, and definitions of what counts as proficiency so varied, that 100,000 speakers is not necessarily more than 10,000. For most sign languages we do not have even a crude estimate. For instance, there are reported to be a million signers in Ethiopia, but it is unknown which or how many sign languages they use.
[1]
There are perhaps around two hundred sign languages in use around the world today. The number is not known with any confidence; new sign languages emerge frequently through creolization and //de novo// (and occasionally through language planning). In some countries, such as Sri Lanka and Tanzania, each school for the deaf may have a separate language, known only to its students and sometimes denied by the school; on the other hand, countries may share sign languages, though sometimes under different names (Croatian and Serbian, Indian and Pakistani). Deaf sign languages also arise outside of educational institutions, especially in village communities with high levels of congenital deafness, but there are significant sign languages developed for the hearing as well, such as the speech-taboo languages used in aboriginal Australia.
The following list is grouped into three sections:
- Deaf sign languages, which are the preferred languages of Deaf communities around the world;
- Signed modes of spoken languages, also known as manually coded languages, which are a bridge between the deaf and oral languages;
- Auxiliary sign systems, which are not native languages, but are signed systems of varying complexity used in addition to oral languages. Simple gestures are not included, as they do not constitute language.
The list is sorted alphabetically and regionally, and such groupings should not be taken to imply any genetic relationships between the languages (see List of language families).[1]Languages are assigned families as British, Swedish (perhaps a branch of BSL), French (with branches ASL (American), Austro-Hungarian, Danish, Italian), German, Japanese, and language isolates.
Contemporary
Africa
There are at least 25 sign languages in Africa, according to researcher Nobutaka Kamei.[2][3][4] Some have distributions that are completely independent of those of African spoken languages. At least 13 foreign sign languages, mainly from Europe and America, have been introduced to at least 27 African nations; some of the 23 sign languages documented by Kamei have originated with or been influenced by them.
isolate
There may be more than one. The indigenous languages is an isolate.